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DNS Names Poised to Become Multilingual
Joe St Sauver
joe@oregon.uoregon.edu
Most of us have become accustomed to seeing domain name entries that we can
easily read, pronounce, and use. This is largely because most Internet domain
names use the same letters and numbers we routinely read and write every day:
the letters a to z, and the digits 0 to 9.
But now, just for a minute, imagine yourself overseas, and imagine that you
speak Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, or Vietnamese. Or imagine that you are
accustomed to writing Cyrillic, Arabic, or Tamil characters. Think how alien
and arbitrary English domain names would seem to you.
That will all be changing soon. Later this year, if current tests proceed without
smoothly, DNS service will be offered worldwide on a level playing field for
most commonly used languages.
Given that there are literally hundreds of millions of international Internet
users who do not routinely use a western alphabet, one can easily see that the
introduction of multinational DNS is potentially a huge event--a truly paradigm-shifting
event--and one which should serve to dramatically increase interest in, and
use of, the Internet by non-Western audiences.
Verisign's Multilingual Domain Names Testbed http://www.verisign-grs.com/multilingual/multilingual.html
Multilingual Internet Names Consortium http://www.minc.org/
Internationalising the Domain Names System http://www.ncne.nlanr.net/training/techs/2001/0128/presentations/200101-park1_files/v3_document.htm
Internationalized Domain Name Working Group http://www.ncne.nlanr.net/training/techs/2001/0128/presentations/200101-seng1_files/v3_document.htm